Cyberselfish Cisco

By Paulina Borsook, MotherJones.com. Posted December 7, 2000.

Four years ago, I published an essay in Mother Jones magazine called "Cyberselfish," in which I criticized the dominant libertarian culture of the high-tech universe. Now, it's almost a half-decade later, and in the dot-com bubble that has bloomed and mostly burst, where high-tech has gone mainstream, and the Brownian noise of day-trading hums incessantly, surely nothing I wrote way back then could possibly still be true.

Wrong.

My new book, "Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech," describes the religion of high-tech, if religion is understood to be a set of mostly unconscious, commonly-held, collective beliefs. And religion, like all human culture, perseveres, even when regimes change (or fail to -- witness the 2000 elections.)

For example, consider the case of Cisco, that fine company which, along with Al Gore, brought you and continues to bring you the Internet. Cisco has a valuation far far in excess of any Old Economy company you can think of, and is one of the Big Three of the New Economy -- Intel and Microsoft being the other two.

Funny thing, Cisco ended up paying no federal income tax last year. Amazing what you can do with the wonders of stock-option accounting. But what's even more amazing, and more telling, is that folks all over Northern California high-tech think this a fine thing: Cisco creates jobs and wealth and isn't this enough?

Yet, as I wrote in the introductory chapter to my book:

"Quiz: where would you want to do business in 2000? In Russia where there's no regulation, no central government, no rule of law; or in Northern California where the roads are mostly well-paved and well-patrolled and trucks and airplanes are safer than not, where the power grid is usually intact and the banking system is mostly fraud-free and mostly works, where construction of new buildings is inspected to make sure they are basically safe and sound, where people mostly don't have to pay protection money, and the majority of law enforcement personnel are not terribly corrupt or brutal? If gangs steal computer chips from factories, these thefts are investigated and the perps prosecuted. And government, through subsidy and regulation and supervision, is the invisible hand behind this relatively peaceful, mostly prosperous scene, making wealth-creation possible.

That government had anything positive to do with any of these structures, checks, and balances that influence so much of how we all live and work (and high-tech so flourishes) is invisible to technolibertarians. Yet these political technolibertarians driving their Hummers home to pricey mansionettes off Woodside Road derive as much benefit from these government interventions as do the poor schnooks driving their Ford LTDs to so-passé factory jobs within commuting distance of Kankakee."

I won't even mention the decades-long government funding for the Internet and the microprocessor industry without which there wouldn't have been a Cisco. But I will instead mention a recent nasty epidemic of food-poisoning that just erupted at a Mexican restaurant in San Mateo county (that's north Silicon Valley). Turns out the restaurant hadn't been inspected in more than a year because -- surprise! -- budget cuts made it impossible to hire enough health inspectors. But hey, government is the Great Satan and we all believe in self-regulation and who needs taxes?

Cisco has also been in the middle of a recent controversy because it wants to develop a 688-acre, 22,000-person campus in Coyote Valley, the last undeveloped open space in the environs of San Jose. The current mayor and planning commission are for it; the Sierra Club and the local Audubon Society are against it -- these two oppponents we would expect.

But also against the development are a former San Jose mayor and a former San Jose planning commissioner, as are the cities and counties to the south and west of the proposed complex. They have all seen what unregulated growth and no planning or funding for infrastructure can do. They have witnessed the effects of the '70s-era tax-revolt ballot initiative known as Proposition 13 -- which capped property taxes and in turn encouraged cash-poor municipalities zone light-industrial to nurture their impovershed taxbases -- has done to Northern California in general and their own communities in particular. It's not a pretty sight. They don't want Silicon Valley's housing, social, environmental, and transit problems to continue to be further exported to them. But these are complex political and social issues, which the Valley always likes to pooh-pooh away.

The proposed Cisco complex will provide 22,000 parking spaces, but no retail and no housing. Traffic? Pollution? Housing costs? These are someone else's problem. We believe in the free market!

The fight is an interesting one, for the argument made by the San Jose planning commission in favor of the project is that its "economic, legal, social, and technological benefits outweigh its environmental impact." Which is truly weird, because last time anyone looked, Silicon Valley was not hurting for jobs. After all, the Valley seems to be a gaping maw for ever greater numbers of imported workers arriving with H1-B visas.

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